Cooperation needed from city on airport

Published 7:00 pm, Sunday, March 13, 2005

This data, I've no doubt though, was given to the reporter, as part of the propaganda and disinformation so readily available from the airport's administration.

Fact: The airport has been under direction to improve the threshold for some 20 years and has done nothing, being cited several times by the FAA for malfeasance in this regard.

It can shorten the runway by a maximum 583 feet (as clearly shown on maps prepared for the city by its consultants) and operate the airport exactly as it is now, which is what should be done.

This is not the FAA's preferred option, but it is an option, according to the FAA.

The FAA wants the airport to operate as a full Part 139 airfield, which it cannot do now with the current threshold. If it is fully operational as a Part 139, it may well mean more and larger planes as the field will then be more attractive to more potential users, many of whom now believe the airport to be tacitly unsafe.

The suspicion and seeming paranoia of the community is well-founded and will not dissipate until the airport administrator is candid, forthcoming and direct with the public he serves.

He cannot yawn his way through community concerns and expect respect and cooperation, the serious deficit of which he and the city are now suffering due to the remarkably poor handling of this nettlesome nightmare.